I do use platinum, but only mixed with palladium. Very few people use platinum by itself, and for some good reasons beyond cost(though Pd is certainly not cheap). Most modern prints labeled as 'platinum' are in fact Pt/Pd prints, or platinum-toned kallitypes(Ag replaced with Pt).

Vintage platinums are a different story. The metal was much cheaper, and the commercially made paper was machine coated. Pt prints were very common, peaking at around 1900-1905, and like the absinthe of the same period, no one today is exactly sure how the commercial paper was made. Paper made by the Platinotype Company is as different to today's hand-coated paper as Pernod Fils is to today's HG--but both can really shine(or not)! There are some interesting parallels between CO platinum and CO absinthe in their rise and fall. Platinum was banned from use in photography and jewelery in 1914, and given a new exclusive use in weapons-making. After WWI the price had gone up 5-fold, and that was pretty much all she wrote. Smaller film formats and the rise of cheaper silver enlargement paper took over.

Speaking of quicksilver, they used to print with mercury too, but I don't think I'll be trying that one.

Yup, I broke a couple thermometers--perhaps on purpose--in my day. There's a big difference in the safe handling of elemental mercury and the mercury salts used in printing. The salt's water-solubility makes it extremely easy for it to enter your body.

'While Wormwood hath seed get a handful or twaineTo save against March, to make flea to refraine:Where chamber is sweeped and Wormwood is strowne,What saver is better (if physick be true)For places infected than Wormwood and Rue?It is a comfort for hart and the braineAnd therefore to have it it is not in vaine.' Tusser 1577

This is Vieux Carré, which is the only truly decent absinthe available to me in western MA(hint to distributors). Tasty, but not my first choice to photograph as the bottles I get tend to be heavy on sediment and need to be decanted.

MA has a real nanny state mentality when it comes to booze. They don't allow interstate shipping, and what is on the shelves here is the same triumvirate: Lucid-Kubler-Pernod. I'm lucky I can even get VC.